Deck, Wind in the Willows, trains

My side deck is a well-travelled highway of cliffs. Robins study the grass for bugs. Squirrels stop to scratch their bellies. A feral grey cat slinks up and sits, intent.

Once in a while a big raccoon trundles across, as belligerent as a badger.

Kenneth Grahame, who wrote the children's classic, The Wind in the Willows, was begged by his publisher to write a sequel. "Didn't you read my book?" he asked. "I like being outdoors. On the moors, in the water. Writing keeps me away from all that."

When I'd skip high school, I'd walk down to the trestle across our lake, climb out on the massive beams, and drowse in the sun. I'd gaze at lily pads, perch, maybe a muskrat. Lily-pad flowers -- known in other parts of the world as lotuses -- follow the sun. They close at night, and open when the sun returns. We could tell when to start rowing home by when the lily-pads began to shut.

On a good day a train would thunder overhead, just feet away, shaking the whole structure. Freight trains, with over 80 cars. Dugga-DUGGA-dugga-dugga, dugga-DUGGA-dugga-dugga.

To this day when I hear a train or see its tracks, I feel it is my dad saying hello to me.